


From Gotham's Gut Came His Laughter

by TimmyJaybird



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Forced Tattooing, Language, M/M, Violence, mentions of drug use, prison rape mentioning, suicide mentiongs, the ship is only vaguely implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimmyJaybird/pseuds/TimmyJaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had always been too much, each sensation that was thrown at him, day in, day out. Each failure in life, each wrong turn, each dead end. It was all consuming- until he found the emergency exit that had been in front of his eyes the whole time.</p><p>Until he understood the joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Gotham's Gut Came His Laughter

**Author's Note:**

> I am so enthralled by the new Joker design for the Suicide Squad film, that I had to draft up what I feel could be a bit of a back story. I drafted this up in about an hour.

He tried to thrash, but thick arms held him down against the dirty cot, smelled like stale sweat and piss and the general dirt of the prison. He felt a tremor run through him, felt it from the core of his spine out through the bones of his nimble fingers, as the large man standing over him _laughed_.

“A fuckin’ joker you are,” he was saying, baring his dirty teeth. “Someone oughta show you some manners, boy.” He struggled again, but the two men holding him were far larger- had muscles built from years behind bars with nothing better to do. Him? He was a kid to them, fresh in for a short span- drug running gone bad, the usual first offense that simply lead to a life down the drains in cities like Gotham.

His skin prickled everywhere they touched him, his arms, his ankles, up under his state-issued orange pants. He didn’t like being _touched_ , not without his consent, control. Too many different textures and pressures to deal with. Too much for his senses to handle.

One of the guys grabbed at his head, hand seeming to engulf his skull, the short, buzzed dirty blonde hair, forcing his head back as the other man- the standing one, the true fear, the source of this torture- leaned down, smirking.

“We gotta make sure everyone can recognize ya,” he was saying, rubbing his hands together. “Can’t have someone thinkin’ shit like you is a _good boy_.” He grabbed the man’s chin, angling his face so he could examine the structure of his bones- the curves of cheek bones, his jaw line. Then, that smirk turning damn near demonic, he released him and turned, walking across the cell.

He struggled, got a swift punch to his belly and gasped, coughing. There were too many smells in this room, too many textures, too many lights and shadows. He’d barely been in prison a few days and his senses weren’t taking kindly too it- not that they care for Gotham, either. His boy simply hated the reality he had been given, left him struggling each day to keep each sense in check with every sensation he was given. Mentally, it was exhausting.

When the man turned around, he was holding something in his hand, some sort of mashed together pen, rubber bands- only when he loomed closer did he recognized what it is. He only struggled all the harder.

“Please!” he gasped, but the man was shaking his head, loving the pathetic way the words tumbled from those lips. He straddled the young man as he was held down, grabbed his chin again.

“Hold still,” he said, stroking one thumb along his cheek bone. His finger pad was rough, felt like sand paper. Too many small grooves in skin grabbing at his own. “Wouldn’t want me to get ya in the eye.”

He rolled his eyes nearly back as the bastard machine scraped into his skin, over sensitive bone and nerves, burning as if someone was splitting each skin cell with molten iron. A whine escaped his mouth as the man worked a few quick strokes, then leaned back, laughing and tossing the machine onto the cot.

“Gimme a mirror,” he called, and the man at the younger man’s feet released his ankles, disappeared for a moment and passed a smudged mirror over. The large, brutish man held it up, so his prey was forced to stare at his reflection, his green eyes so wide his pupils were gone, nothing but acid, his skin gone to a sick pallor, not helped by his buzzed blonde scalp.

All he saw was the sketchy _J_ tattooed on one cheek bone.

On him still, the man was laughing, “Now,” he said, grinning, “Everyone will know ya for the joker you are.”

*

Later in life, when he’d gotten out, when he’d returned to the streets- smarter now, angrier now, _carefuller now_ \- he took up a red hood to hide his face. The mark stared back at him, every day in the mirror. Every day when he rolled form the same unmade, dirty bed, when he looked in the mirror with that one splintering crack, that J stared back at him, the label of the first fuck up of his life.

_Getting caught_.

The hood hid that, took away his identity entirely. No one knew him, and that was fine. He didn’t need anyone to. He liked it that way, liked to be faceless. It was easier to be angry when you were faceless- when you could hate everyone because you simply _didn’t exist_. And oh, how he _hated_. Hated the way his skin was too tight over bone and muscle, the way Gotham city raped his senses from dusk til dawn- every waking moment of his day. Hated the way the meds didn’t help- oh, during his stint in prison they had tried. Given him meds to dull his senses, said it would make the constant static in his head calm down, would make it so his dreams weren’t more vivid then his waking sights.

All they had done was remove him entirely from his skin. Like he could float above himself, watch as he did nothing but sat, motionless, half dead to the world and who the fuck cared anyway? He was just another piece of trash form the streets, another body that would warm a cell until he warmed a body bag. He was nothing, and the world would be damned if it treated him like anything but that.

He’d taken the pills for a few days at most, before he started hiding them, flushing them. Anything. He’d take the static over a total loss of self.

He’d take the hated lines of ink over that. He’d take the scars the city had given him, ridges of pale and pink skin he could trace, a map to help him relearn his body. He’d even take the ones he had given himself, those times he thought the shit he trafficked could _help_ him. All drugs had ever done was drive him so mad he was sure he saw something glimmer, something at the end of the tunnel, the bottom of the rabbit hole. Something that bubbled in him, but he couldn’t grasp.

He _liked_ the work he did under the hood- even when Gotham was becoming a different world. For the first time, someone was standing up, fighting back. Some guy dressed up like fucking Halloween, but that was fine. He wasn’t a _bad_ guy, he was just down on his luck, always had been. He didn’t really hurt that many people- okay, he’d gunned down a few, but that was the job. He wasn’t like all the shit he ran with.

Besides, what would the guy do? Kill him? Fine then, let him. It’s save him from doing it himself, someday down the roads. Days, years, decades- who knew. But it was the eventual end, he was sure. It was the best end he could hope for- better then life in prison when he eventually fucked up big enough to get it, better then being gunned down by some fucking stranger who wouldn’t even see his face. Wouldn’t know him. And what would they get, if they looked at his face when he was dead? Think he was some fucking clown?

He was more serious then the shadows Gotham shit on it’s people.

The run he was doing now, it had gone to hell in a hand basket so quickly his head had spun. He didn’t like working in the ACE chemical factory, didn’t like all the smells that were so unnatural- and even under the hood, he couldn’t hide from them. His breath was too hot, trapped inside with him, and he felt like he was beginning to melt off his bones in the heat.

They had scattered, and the man was there, that vigilante, that freak with the mask. He didn’t know what to do- couldn’t let the man get his hands on him. He’d crush his bones, fry every sense he possessed- and worse, send him right back to a cell. Not again, not after the nights he’d spent biting a filthy pillow while being told he _liked_ being someone’s bitch. Not after the fact that the state issue slim-soap couldn’t wash away the sweat stench from the men who thought he was lithe and pretty and an easy fuck.

Never again.

He grabbed at the railings as he ran, turning a sharp corner, only to slam into a solid body, have hands grab at his arms. He thrashed, saw through the red hood that terrifying stare- and was sure he was looking right at the thing of nightmares. The man smirked, and he squirmed more, managed to get his knee into the vigilante’s gut, knock the wind out of him so he could free himself, turn and run with all the strength his legs held.

He didn’t feel the metal walk way giving, slowly, old metal warn by years of exposure to the chemicals in the air. All he knew was that he was screaming that he _wasn’t like the others_ that he _wasn’t a bad guy_.

Then something snapped, and the walk way went lax, opening up above one seething vat. He gave a cry, hooked his arms along one metal rung, and clung for his dear life. The static in his head buzzed so loudly he couldn’t hear the Vigilante’s pounding bootsteps, didn’t know he was even close until the man was reaching down, offering a hand, screaming at him to take it.

He unhooked one arm, reached as far as he could, his fingers grazing the man’s gloved palm- but then the rung slipped free, a small metal chain snapping, and he was falling, falling, splashing into liquid fire and seeing nothing but that man’s silhouette above as he sank down into the acid.

It burned, burned every body, felt like someone was pouring bleach straight into his mouth, his eyes. Like someone was fucking him with a fire rod, liquefying his insides until he was nothing but a sack of melted bone and degenerated muscle. He couldn’t breathe, and when he tried he swallowed it, tasted the bitter vileness of it all, the way it fried his tongue. The static in his head over-took, there was simply too much. Too many smells, tastes, touches. Everything caved in on him, reality snapping in half and strangling him, taking his breath, stealing each beat of his heart.

He was sure he would have died, and oh, he didn’t want it to be like this. A fucking bullet to the brain would’ve been faster, would have silenced all that consumed him, everything that he touched and tasted. Could’ve wrapped his mouths right around the barrel- because of, he’d learned how to use his mouth to keep him out of trouble, unless he wanted to bleed between his legs for days. Oh, the things life in Gotham had taught him.

He was dead. Or, he was sure he was dead. But time seemed to give, to slow, to speed up, to leave him in a stasis, until he was throw out from a drain, into the cold mud far outside the chemical plant. He crawled through the thick sludge, just away from the mouth of the pipe, before he reached up, pried his hood off and threw it. He gasped for air, sucked it in, let it hurt his lungs with how cool it was.

He reached up, pawed at his face with muddy hands, couldn’t believe there was skin over his skull still, that his lips had not fused together. He tried to stand, got onto his knees and fell over, every bit of energy taken from his body. Oh, what a cruel joke this was, to be _alive_ after all of that. To be alive after facing hell, after swallowing hell like a fucking lover and welcoming it into his body.

He should have died. Oh, it would have been better. His body ached as if he had been run over, every bone snapped. Breathing _hurt_ , yet he continued to try.

It was pathetic. It was humiliating. It was... _funny_.

Something was bubbling up inside him again, something he had felt before, yet had never been able to fully grasp, to yank up form his guts and wretch out to examine. But now it came, unbidden and free, up from his belly, rattling his ribs, tearing through his throat. _Laughter_ , the unhinged kind that echoed through the walls of hallow bones, and warmed dying blood to boiling point.

He laughed. He laughed like he had never laughed before- because it was _funny_. It was funny that life could continue to fuck him so brutally when he had never done as much as look in its direction.

The laughter felt so _freeing_ though- and in that moment, his head was clear. The static had stopped, and suddenly, there was only his laughter and a blissful silence he had never known. He curled up on himself, hands shaking as he tore his gloves off, looked at pale skin that had turned a sickly pallor- not bleach white, but as if he was _dying_.

Was that the joke? He was simple a step away from death, but it never came. Was it funny that he could be so cruelly courted and never once _taken_?

He laughed again, simply because the silence in his head was so blissful. His cheeks ached from the grin on his face, could have split open had he dug at them with his jagged nails. But the silence in his head, it was the sweetest thing to ever happen to him.

*

Somehow, he had made it back into Gotham’s gut, to the dingy hole in the wall room he had taken up as his own. He’d spent days relearning himself- his skin had gone such a pallor it was simply terrifying. The chemicals had done something to him, to be sure, physically. His hair had gone a startling green, unnatural, like the color of the acid in the vat itself. Only surpassed by his eyes.

He had stared at himself until he simply grinned, because really, it was _funny_. He could see it, as he traced the J on his cheek with one finger, oh, _he could see it now_. He could hear the joke for the first time, and now- he saw the punch line.

Days in isolation ended when he took to the Gotham streets nights later, when he crept among the shadows and watched the city life pass him by. He needed something, and he knew what- oh, he knew exactly what now. He felt as if he knew _everything_ now.

The man he had grabbed probably had a name, but he wouldn’t ever know. He slammed a hand over his mouth, dragged him from the alley so deep he couldn’t see the street, then took the switch blade he had kept under his pillow at night- just in case the nightmares became a reality, just in case he woke up and couldn’t decide what was _real_ -he took that switch blade and he opened up the man’s throat like a bag of candy. The blood that stained his victim’s t-shirt was lick liquid licorice, and he felt it in him again, that bubbling laughter, escaping through his lips as a giggle, one crackling at the edges with something far greater then a secret joke.

He cut the man open, his belly, left him a steaming mess for some poor passer-by the find, to call Gotham’s _finest_ to investigate. Good. He hoped the cops got a good scare. Maybe one of them would be the same bastard who had busted him for that run, way back that sent him to prison. Fuck him, he hoped he gave him the sweetest nightmares of his life.

He’d taken the man’s wallet, pleasantly surprised it had been recently filled with a decent amount of cash- and he assumed the man had been on his way to score, or maybe he was buying corner pussy. Either way, he folded the cash, shoved it in his pocket, and made his way across town through the shadows.

The door gave a little _chime_ when he walked through, and the man at the counter looked up from his magazine, eyeing his skinny, pale body with a sense of curiosity. He grinned at the man, pulling the cash from his pocket and slapping it onto the counter.

“I want you to decorate me,” he said, and grinned.

The needle that buzzed in his skin now, it was far less the burn it had once been, that first time, on his cheek. Oh, this wasn’t free of the sensation, but it was clean, precise. It worked in solid lines along his shoulder and chest, then worked out shadows of ink that contrasted perfectly against his pale skin.

The skull with the jester cap were simply the start. He would spend the whole night in this chair if he needed to, if the man would allow it. The pain meant nothing, it was rather sweet now- intoxicating, perfect drags of needle, luscious aches that made him feel alive in a way he never had.

He could handle it, because he saw the joke- and it was him. All these years, he had been the punchline to every one of life’s jabs, every joke that left the lips of fate. Oh, he had been punched alright, and he still had never _seen_. But his eyes were open now, so open that they ached. He accepted it all for what it was, this reality that had forever plagued his senses. And now that he accepted it as what it was- nothing but a _joke_ \- he could manage it. After all, _everyone could tell a joke_.

And the best part of all? He looked the part now- a pale clown with laughish green hair. He’d paint his lips cliche red, when he got home, when he looked at the raw ink in his skin. He coal-up his eyes and grin, laugh at himself in the mirror until he felt positively giddy with life.

He looked the part now, the label he had been given in that prison cell long ago. If the world wanted a joker, he’d give them one. He’d be _the_ Joker that Gotham seemed so desperate for.

And he had that nightmare-man to thank for it all, for giving him that much needed dip in his acid-bath. Oh, he would spend the rest of his days trying to thank him for simply opening up his eyes-

For letting him finally see the joke.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so in love with this stupid clown, I will take any chance I get to study his character and give him endless new births. And honestly, the fact that I am getting a Joker covered in tattoos had me crying. Everyone may not like the design, but it has killed me with joy.
> 
> I wanted to try and draft up something before the movie comes out (I mean, obviously there's time). Perhaps after I see it, I'll have to revisit these ideas a bit.


End file.
